Oh, baby baby. I haven't felt this cold since I watched Michael Keaton play Batman. And that was pretty hollow inside.
Day one. After three hours of sleep, I rise. Outside, everything is white and still. Dark stores. A few, brave cars creep along the long frozen roads. Black spruce hunch over in their loads. Alaska, December, the darkest of the dark, coldest of the cold, and I wouldn't rather be anywhere than here for this Christmas break.
Bus ride and flights went well. Between La Grande and Boise on the Grayhound, I met a small sunshine ray named Sarah and we talked for near three hours all the wway to my destination. We talked on our paths in life, our goals, care, gurus, acid trips, anorexia, God, love, fathers and love languages. Short and flexible, she rode with her leg up on the front seat the entire way. She wore glasses and a burka, purely for the aesthetics of the thing. It's always nice to meet someone with whom one can engage the bigger topics in life, and fast. Skip all the conversational foreplay and cut right to the meat of the thing, pun intended. Though, oddly enough, I've found with these people that, in fact, the deeper subjects are the conversational foreplay. Beneath the philosophies, the ologies, the theories and life lessons, a deep goofiness always resides. I'm one of these such people. Sarah was as well. We ended the trip giggling at passing stores signs after having plumbed the human soul. Odd how that happens. I wouldn't have had it any other way.
And on my last leg of the trip I finished The Last Temptation of Christ. First I want to say how utterly much I connect with Kazantazakis' convictions, or at least those P. A. Bien says he learned from Neitzche.
Day one. After three hours of sleep, I rise. Outside, everything is white and still. Dark stores. A few, brave cars creep along the long frozen roads. Black spruce hunch over in their loads. Alaska, December, the darkest of the dark, coldest of the cold, and I wouldn't rather be anywhere than here for this Christmas break.
Bus ride and flights went well. Between La Grande and Boise on the Grayhound, I met a small sunshine ray named Sarah and we talked for near three hours all the wway to my destination. We talked on our paths in life, our goals, care, gurus, acid trips, anorexia, God, love, fathers and love languages. Short and flexible, she rode with her leg up on the front seat the entire way. She wore glasses and a burka, purely for the aesthetics of the thing. It's always nice to meet someone with whom one can engage the bigger topics in life, and fast. Skip all the conversational foreplay and cut right to the meat of the thing, pun intended. Though, oddly enough, I've found with these people that, in fact, the deeper subjects are the conversational foreplay. Beneath the philosophies, the ologies, the theories and life lessons, a deep goofiness always resides. I'm one of these such people. Sarah was as well. We ended the trip giggling at passing stores signs after having plumbed the human soul. Odd how that happens. I wouldn't have had it any other way.
And on my last leg of the trip I finished The Last Temptation of Christ. First I want to say how utterly much I connect with Kazantazakis' convictions, or at least those P. A. Bien says he learned from Neitzche.
Neitzche, he later said, taught him that the only way a man can be free is to struggle--to lose himself in a cause, to fight without fear and without hope of reward.
Men need a fight. Men need a struggle. Men need a cause toward which to dedicate themselves entirely, an outlet into which to funnel their care. If not, they become frustrated, impotent, drinking and fucking their passions away and otherwise becoming little more than angry, rusted cogs in the great machine which is society. No thank you. Men need a purpose, a struggle. They need a war, even if not physical.
Almost sounds like the Wild at Heart principle, though I've never read the book. Chandler, comment on this?
So, that all being said, gnosticism. In the world religions, there are two polarized camps in regards to world and matter: world-affirmation and world-negation. I'm reminded of Schweitzer's search in Philosophy of Civilization for a world-affirming philosophy and his subsequent frustration, conlcuding, finally, in his Reverence for Life. That being said, Gnosticism in the greatest manifestation of world-negation philosophies and religions, even surpassing that of Buddhism and escatalogical theism. In Gnosticism, the world is not reclaimed in any way, not by oneness, as in Buddhism, or by redemption, as in historical Christianity. No, matter, world, and flesh have no good and are purely deception, dream, illusion, and, finally, temptation.
In the book, Jesus oscillates between world-affirmation and world-negation. He desperately tries to understand reality around him, inside him, and his flesh and soul in relation. Initially, he begins in the traditional Jewish ascetic view of flesh as hindrance to God. Jesus' purpose for going to the monastary,
Almost sounds like the Wild at Heart principle, though I've never read the book. Chandler, comment on this?
So, that all being said, gnosticism. In the world religions, there are two polarized camps in regards to world and matter: world-affirmation and world-negation. I'm reminded of Schweitzer's search in Philosophy of Civilization for a world-affirming philosophy and his subsequent frustration, conlcuding, finally, in his Reverence for Life. That being said, Gnosticism in the greatest manifestation of world-negation philosophies and religions, even surpassing that of Buddhism and escatalogical theism. In Gnosticism, the world is not reclaimed in any way, not by oneness, as in Buddhism, or by redemption, as in historical Christianity. No, matter, world, and flesh have no good and are purely deception, dream, illusion, and, finally, temptation.
In the book, Jesus oscillates between world-affirmation and world-negation. He desperately tries to understand reality around him, inside him, and his flesh and soul in relation. Initially, he begins in the traditional Jewish ascetic view of flesh as hindrance to God. Jesus' purpose for going to the monastary,
I must go away, I must escape, he thought, must not set foot. In Magdala--curse the place! I won't stop till I reach the desert and bury myself in the monastery. There I will kill the flesh and turn it into spirit. (Kazantazakis 82)
[The Abbot] was angry with God and wanted to die. He wanted to die--that he made abundantly clear to the brothers--so that his soul might be unburdened by the brothers, might be able to ascend to heaven in order to find God... The body was lead; it prevented his ascent. (KaZantazakis 99)
Jesus wants to "escape" the flesh and turn it into spirit through isolation and spiritual discipline. The abbot is restless to lose the flesh and fly to God. The flesh is only a hindrance to these monks, a barrier and deafening pillow through which God's voice is dampened. Only through self-emaciation and bodily flaggilation can the deafness be exorcised. However, across the book Jesus internally changes his view on the flesh (and concurrently the world and matter) several times.
"We worship within our selves, Jacob," Jesus said. "Our bodies are a temple." (Kazantazakis 232)
"Bless you mother Salome," he said. "It is right you should care for the body. The body is the camel on which the body mounts to traverse the desert." (Kazantazakis 336)
The flesh has now been redeemed; the flesh is now a vessel, a precious on, in which the spirit is carried in this life, and as such must be taken care of and nurtured if the spirit is also to remain healthy. This position is much closer to traditional Christianity and post-wilderness Buddha, seeing the flesh as a vehicle which must remain healthy if one is to work in the spirit. The flesh and spirit, to Jesus, are coming closer and closer, nearer and nearer to one, until, finally, he has the ephiphany of Buddha under the mohabatti tree.
It sang, and Jesus trembled. He had not realized that such riches were inside him, nor so many delectable, unrevealed joys and sins. His insides blossomed; the nightingale became entangled in he flowering branches and could not, did not, wish to flee ever again. Where to go? Why should it leave? The earth was Paradise... (Kazantazakis 433)
All is one, the earth is Paradise, Paradice is earth, heaven has reached down its brazen fingers and touched the world, exploding it to golden streets, marriage hymns, and God. The earth has been exalted. This conclusion is completed by "Satan" in Jesus' temptation.
"My boy, is this the kindgdom of heaven I announced to men?" he asked.
"No, no," the angel replied, laughing. "This is the earth."
"How did it change so much?"
"It did not change; you did. Once upon a time your heart did not want the earth: it went against her will. Now it swants her--and that is th whole secret. Harmony between the earth and the heart, Jesus of Nazareth:that is the kingdom of heaven." (Kazantazakis 447)
The earth is desired, the earth is affirmed, ironically, by "Satan", the tempter, the entity trying to keep Jesus outside of God's will of dying on the cross, a position very similar to the Demiurge of the Gnostic redactions. Now, to Jesus, the earth is heaven, and he has no desire for wings, even if they are there to be had.
However, by the end, he renounces this world-affirmation yet again, taking on his greatest position of world-negation of the entire book, and rejoicing in his discipline against the temptations of the wiley deciever and lusty world.
However, by the end, he renounces this world-affirmation yet again, taking on his greatest position of world-negation of the entire book, and rejoicing in his discipline against the temptations of the wiley deciever and lusty world.
A wild, indominatable joy took posession of hijm. No, no, he was not a coward, a deserter, a traitor. No, he was nailed tot he cross. He had stood his ground honorably to the very end; he had kept his word. The moemnt he cried ELI ELI and fainted, Temptation had capture him for a ssplit second and led him sastray. THe joys, marriages and children were lies; the decripit, degraded old men whoshouted coward, eserter, traiter at him were lies. All---all were illusions sent by the Devil... Everythign ad turned out as it shuld ,glory be to God! (Kazantazakis 496)
Jesus ends on complete, utter renunciation of the world, its joys, pleasures, and any sort of salvation through life. The only way to God is through the cross, through the ultimate act of self-destruction and the supposed resurrection forthcoming (though, the story ceases before we see if, in fact, he does resurrect and attain his long-desired apotheosis). In this final stance, as is predicated by both the Eastern traveler in Mary's brothel early in the book as well as Mary's dream while in the dream (Inception, anybody?), life is a dream, the world and its pleasures are illusory, and the only path to God is to escape them, or so Jesus ends the book on. Jesus struggle, then, is between complete world-negation and some forms of partial world-affirmation, though in the finale of the book, he ends on the latter. The film is exactly similar: Jesus ends the book a Gnostic: the world is illusion, temptation, and hindrance to God, and only through his crucifixion and escape from the illusions of Satan (the Demiurge?) can salvation for himself and the world be attained.
All done for now. Tomorrow I'll explore another Gnostic facet of Jesus struggle and the book as a whole.
For now, merry Christmas! Don't eat too much pie...
All done for now. Tomorrow I'll explore another Gnostic facet of Jesus struggle and the book as a whole.
For now, merry Christmas! Don't eat too much pie...